Understanding the Old Testament - Lesson 25

Understanding the Old Testament 
Dr. Miles Van Pelt
ot102-25 
Ruth 
Lesson Transcript
 

We've now come to the book of Ruth in the Hebrew Bible, and you know that the book of Ruth follows the book of Proverbs, specifically Proverbs 31. And in Proverbs 31, we have that acrostic poem, The Wife of Strength. Well, canonically speaking, Ruth becomes the real-life living example of that woman.

She's the only one in the Hebrew Bible to be called such. This expression occurs only three times in the Hebrew Bible, this woman of strength expression, Proverbs 12:4, where the woman of strength is the crown of her husband. Proverbs 31:10, says, "A woman of strength, who can find? She is far more valuable than rubies." And then in Ruth 3:11, where it says, all of the rulers of my people know that you are, in fact, this woman of strength. Ruth, a Moabite, is scandalous, and we'll find out why later. It is also interesting to note that Boaz is the only single individual in the Hebrew Bible ever designated as a mighty man of valor in Yish G'bor Ha'o in Hebrew. So both Ruth and Boaz are going to have special designations because of the relationship they have and what they've done in this particular book. 

Now, the acrostic poem in Proverbs 31 begins with the search for a strong woman. The poem concludes by noting that the deeds of this woman will praise her at the gate of her people. Now, if we go back to Ruth 3:11b, we see that the author of the book of Ruth wants to connect Ruth to Proverbs 31. Here's how. When it says, all of the rulers of my people know that you're a woman of strength, what is translated in most translations as all the rules, all the rulers of my people, ESV, everyone in the village, the net Bible, all the city of my people, King James, or all the townsmen, NIV, is rendered from Hebrew, all the gate of my people know that you are a woman of strength. That is this designation for Ruth that the gate of the people understand her as a woman of strength frames the Proverbs 31 account. Woman of strength at the beginning, praised in the gate at the end. So she represents the totality of that Proverbs 31 reality. That's the canonical function of the book of Ruth and we'll find out why later. 

Ruth in the New Testament is listed in the gospel of Matthew, in the genealogy of Jesus, along with three other women, Tamar, who slept with her father-in-law, disguised as a prostitute, Rahab, a Canaanite prostitute, Bathsheba, an adulteress who was married to a foreigner, and Ruth, a foreigner and a Moabite. Scandalous indeed, and that's what the gospel loves to do.

A couple of background issues related to the book of Ruth so that when you're reading it, you can understand what's going on in the narrative. First, the author is unknown. Victor Hamilton says that it is an exercise in futility to try to determine the author, whoever he or she may be. It's simply one of those wonderful anonymous books that have ended up in our Bible. 

In terms of literature, the Book of Ruth is a well-crafted Hebrew narrative like so many other Hebrew narratives that preceded it. The patriarchal narratives, the Joseph story, the judges, and the narratives of the kings of Israel, especially Saul, David, and Solomon. In this case, however, the book of Ruth appears in section one of the writings between two poetic wisdom compositions, Proverbs 31 and the Song of Songs. As such, the book of Ruth is best understood as a wisdom narrative in the tradition of the Joseph narrative, a wisdom narrative. All right, so we have a wisdom narrative with an author.

Now some background issues. First, what does it mean that Ruth is a Moabite in the life of Israel? Well, the Moabites come from Lot. You'll recall from Genesis 19 that Lot and his daughters fled from Sodom and Gomorrah to the hills. During that time, because the women didn't have any husbands, his two daughters slept with him to produce offspring. We have paternal incest in Genesis 19. The younger daughter was the mother of the Ammonites, but the older daughter was the mother of the Moabites, so Moab and Ammon. This particular relationship was so important to the Israelites that they were banned from participating in the worship of Israel if they came into their camp for 10 generations. And we have that in Deuteronomy 23, two through six. So to be a Moabite is to be a scandalous person in the life of Israel.

Secondly, kinsman-redeemer. What does that mean? We're going to talk about a redeemer, see a redeemer appearing in the book of Ruth. It's going to be Boaz. He's going to be Ruth's kinsman-redeemer. The verbal root to redeem occurs 104 times in the Hebrew Bible, 22 times in Leviticus, for example, 23 times in Isaiah, but 22 times in these four chapters of Ruth. The highest concentration of this word in any other place in the Hebrew Bible. About redemption, there are two types of redemption that we see in the Hebrew Bible stipulated in the covenant code. The first is the redemption of land. That is, if you come to the place in life where you need money for something and you have no other resources, you can sell your land for some time, but you can't sell it forever. And at the end of that time, you can either buy it back or a redeemer in your family can buy it back. And that was your redeemer. And we're going to see that play out here because Ruth is going to be associated with land and Boaz is going to have to buy the land and take Ruth as her husband at the same time because you can't remove it from the family.

The second one is the kinsman-redeemer. And this is found in Deuteronomy 25:5 through 10. And it goes like this. If brothers are living together and one of them dies without a son, his widow must not marry outside the family and her husband's brother shall take her and marry her and fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law. That is, Ruth's destitution, we'll see, must be solved not by any man in Israel, but it must be a family member to keep that name and that family line going. So there's the redemption of the land in Leviticus and the redemption of a family line and offspring in Deuteronomy 25. 

There's also the issue of gleaning, something we might not think much about in our day and age. Gleaning is talked about in Leviticus 19, Leviticus 23, and Deuteronomy 24 if you're interested in those texts. And what that means is this: Because the Lord was sovereign over the land and the land was a gift for Israel, when he would make them fruitful and prosperous through the land, they were not allowed to harvest 100% of the material from the fields and the vineyards. They must leave some behind for the widow, the orphan, and the stranger. And so what we're going to see here in the book of Ruth is that Boaz is harvesting his fields and he's obeying these commands to not harvest everything. And so then Ruth will come along and harvest behind Boaz's workers to provide for herself and her mother-in-law. So we have Moabites, kind of wretched people to the Israelites. We have redemption of the land and redemption of family lines. And then we have gleaning as the background issues in the book of Ruth. And you can see those texts.

So what's the basic plot? There are only four chapters and 85 verses in this book. It's a wonderful short story. And each chapter has its basic plot. And what we're going to see is we're going to see abundance, exile and despair, suffering, return, and provision. We've seen these themes before over and over in the Bible. Think about Israel, the end of the promised land, suffering and exile, and then a return, a promised return and prosperity. It's the same theme in a kind of miniature situation. In chapter one, we go from Bethlehem of Judah to Moab and back again. And the theme is destitution.

In the first five verses, we see that there is a famine in the land and Elimelech and Naomi take their two sons and they flee to Moab to endure this famine. We've seen this theme a lot before, Abraham and Isaac, and then the 12 patriarchs fleeing down to Egypt during the time of the famine. And they always go in, are oppressed, and come out with more than they have or had before. That's the theme that we're going to see here. That's chapter one. So in chapter one, what's going to happen? Naomi and Elimelech are going to go to Moab with their two sons.

Their two sons are going to marry. And then Elimelech and the two sons die. And so Ruth and the other sister-in-law are just left with Naomi and there's no provision for them, no provision for them that way. In terms of the key verse for this particular chapter, we're looking at Ruth 1:21. Ruth 1:21 is the key verse for this chapter. If you want a summary of the contents where it says in Naomi's words, "I went away full and the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi, which means pleasant, when the Lord has afflicted me and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me." Okay. She went away full. She's come back empty. That's chapter one. We also read in this chapter, in chapter one, that Naomi's going to go back to her land after her son and her husband have died. And Ruth is going to go with her, even at great urgings not to. 

In chapter two, we see Ruth and Boaz in the fields. That is, this is the gleaning time. Boaz is making a harvest. He's allowing people to glean. And so the theme here is protection and provision, protection and provision. We've already talked about gleaning and the laws of Moses. There's the providential meeting of Boaz, a kinsman redeemer. The key verse for this chapter is at the very end when Ruth speaks to Boaz, she says, "May the Lord repay you for what you have done. And may you be richly rewarded by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge." Now, note these two words here, may the Lord repay you, and may you be richly rewarded. Those words come from the verbal root or the word shalom, which means to make whole. And then again, watch this word here, under whose wings you have come to take refuge. That's going to play a very key role in chapter three. 

We now move to chapter three, where Ruth and Boaz are on the threshing floor. Ruth and Boaz are on the threshing floor. So what's happened is Boaz has made his harvest, right? And he's threshing the wheat and Ruth goes to him at night and she sleeps there at night with him and does something there. And we'll talk about that in a second.

So Ruth and Boaz are on the threshing floor. And the theme of this chapter is marriage and redemption, more protection and provision. Marriage and redemption, more protection and provision. In Ruth 3.9, we read that Boaz is sleeping on the ground and Ruth lies beside him and she spreads the corner of his garment over him. Uncovers his feet and spreads the corner of his garment over him. This is the expression here to spread the corner of one's cloak or garment over a female. The word for the corner is that same word, wing, that she was taking refuge under that Boaz said earlier. So she spread the wing of his cloak over the female. This expression right here in Ruth 3:9 occurs only two times in the Hebrew Bible. This is important here and in Ezekiel 16:8 where Yahweh marries Israel by spreading the corner of his garment over Israel Noting that he's going to take Israel into his inheritance. So to spread the corner of the garment over someone is an expression that refers to the covenant of marriage.

And here's the amazing thing is that Ruth is proposing it to Boaz, not Boaz to her. So she is taking the initiative as the woman of strength, the woman of strength. There are two key verses here when Ruth propositions Boaz for marriage. There are two key verses, Ruth 3:10 about blessing. This is Boaz and he said, "May you be blessed by the Lord my daughter. You have made this last kindness greater than the first and you have not gone after younger men, whether rich or poor." That is Ruth could have gone after any kind of man in the area, maybe rich or poor, good-looking or not, but she chose the family alliance of the kinsmen redeemer, the family alliance of the kinsmen redeemer. And what does that choice make to choose the family alliance of the kinsmen redeemer? It's Ruth 3:11. This is the key verse in the whole book. And now my daughter, do not fear. All of my people know that you are a woman of strength or power or integrity," however you want to say it. So in some sense, this is the climax of the book where Ruth receives this approbation about her strength as a woman. Notice she's not even a wife yet, but she's called this here. 

This leads us to chapter four of the small little book in the Hebrew Bible where Ruth and Boaz are married. The theme here is blessing because it says this, Boaz says, "You are to me like seven sons." Ruth is to Boaz like seven sons, which is interesting because that's the number of sons restored to Job at the end of his calamity. So there's a sense of tremendous blessing. 

There are also two key verses here. The first key verse is Ruth 4:11 through 12 with relationship to status, relationship to status. "When all the people were at the gate of the elders, they said, we are witnesses. May the Lord make the woman who is coming into your house, like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the house of Israel. May you act worthily in Ephrathah and be renowned in Bethlehem. And may your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah because of the offspring that the Lord will give you by this young woman." Now this is amazing because we know that what's going to come around is that Ruth is going to be grafted into the family line of David. And this is a prophetic blessing about the nature of this thing that has been provoked by her, let's say, grafting herself into the line of God's people. 

The second key verse is chapter four, verse 14, where it says, "Then the woman said to Naomi, blessed be the Lord who has not left you this day without a Redeemer. And may his name be renowned in Israel. And what an amazing thing to talk about Boaz as this Redeemer." But Boaz points to the Redeemer, of course, beyond himself. You might even think of David as being a great figure or Solomon being a great figure.

 But again, that is going to stretch all the way forth to Jesus Christ, who will be the ultimate Redeemer. 

So a concluding question then for us to consider here. What makes Ruth the Eshath Chayil of the Hebrew Bible? What makes her the woman of strength or power? Why not Sarah or Rebecca or Miriam, Hannah, Deborah, or Jael? All women or all women who would be worthy of such a designation because of their role in the covenant administration of God's people. Here's what I think is going on here. Did not Jesus say in Matthew 19:29, and everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or fathers or children or mothers or lands for my sake will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life. Indeed, Ruth is the example of someone who left and forsook all of her family line back in Moab to cling and unite to the people of God in a very intimate way through marriage.

Also, Dempster observes that the book of Ruth ends in this 10-member genealogy that connects her to the line of David. Dempster says this, "The 10-member genealogy located in Ruth echoes, the 10-member genealogy before the flood in Genesis 5 that begins with Adam and closes with Noah, and the 10-member genealogy in Genesis 11 that begins with Shem and ends with Abraham or Abram at this point. This new 10-member genealogy here in Ruth set within the context of exile keeps the reader on track, ensuring that the movement toward a divine goal within history is not forgotten."

Right, you can think that Ruth in this little obscure place in this little town of Bethlehem and exiled in Moab and all this kind of crazy stuff that's going on would make it seem in some sense like God's plan is just not working out. In fact, amid this chaos and loss and redemption and redeeming, we see that Ruth becomes this wonderful example of Proverbs 31, forsaking all that she has to cling to God's people and in that sense reminding us that God's plan is still moving forward. And so it's no small thing to think of it in these terms when we're thinking about what's happening with Ruth and Boaz and her family line.

The mother of Boaz is Rahab, the Canaanite prostitute, right? So Boaz knows what it means to in some sense be united in a family with foreigners, right? His father has taught him that, right? So Boaz is living in that same light. And so what's amazing is that we have Rahab, the great-grandmother of David, and Ruth, the grandmother of David, right? So when you talk about redemption, you're not just talking about something smaller. You're talking about people destined for destruction who have come into the line of God and clung to him and experienced that salvation and redemption in a significant way.

That's the book of Ruth. It's four chapters, an amazing book, and plenty to study here.